


One Truth Prevails

by Norickayer



Series: Postcards from Elsewhere: A Collection of Young Avengers one-shots [7]
Category: Magic Kaito, Young Avengers, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: (is that a thing?), Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, I have no regrets, This is my life now, Two-Shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-18 13:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3571919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Norickayer/pseuds/Norickayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy Maximoff was smart. He knew it, Kate knew it, the entire NYPD knew it. His memory wasn’t photographic, but he just seemed to notice things before other people did. His brain seemed to work just that much faster.<br/>So the one time he found himself in a situation he couldn’t think himself out of, you’ll forgive him for freaking out.<br/>(The one where Tommy is a teen detective, until he isn't)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The fusion AU that absolutely no one asked for.

Tommy Maximoff was smart. He knew it, Kate knew it, the entire NYPD knew it. His memory wasn’t photographic, but he just seemed to notice things before other people did. His brain seemed to work just that much faster.

So the one time he found himself in a situation he couldn’t think himself out of, you’ll forgive him for freaking out.

“ThisCan’tBeHappening, ThisCan’tBeHappening, ThisCan’tBeHappening,” he muttered to himself as he stumbled along the sidewalk. “I’m dreaming I’m hallucinating I’m drugged, ThisCan’tBeHappening.”

He braced himself with one hand on the brick wall beside him and just tried to keep walking. This was made more difficult by his newly-short legs and the comically-large clothing he was swaddled in.

He shuffled his feet to avoid tripping. He struggled to keep his head high enough to see the path in front  of him. The angle was all wrong. Muscle memory was thrown out the window. He felt like a newly-born deer trying to take its first steps.

He needed to get out. He needed to get somewhere safe and regroup. He needed to figure out what the hell happened to him.

“Hey kid,” an older woman hailed, “are you okay? Where are your parents?”

“I’m fine I’m going home gotta go bye,” Tommy rambled, not making eye contact.

If he was at his best, he would have known exactly why that answer was unconvincing.

The woman stopped to stand directly in Tommy’s way.

“Kid, you look terrible. Do you need me to call someone?”

“No, I just-“ Tommy started.

She reached down to grab his wrist.

Tommy bolted. Hiked up the pants, curled his toes into the huge sneakers and took off at a run.

He made it two blocks before he tripped, sending his whole body flying onto the concrete.

“Young man? Are you alright?”

Tommy was about to scream about the unfairness of well-meaning old people.

He wants to rail against the universe. How dare it leave murder victims alone and cold in their last moments, but throw Good Samaritans into Tommy’s path when he only wanted to be left alone.

He looked up, about to spit out some impressive curse words that didn’t belong to a face as young as his.

But then, he knew this guy.

Like, really well.

“Uncle Charles?” he asked, dazed.

The bald man leaned forward in his wheelchair, bracing his hands on the rubber wheels. He squinted at Tommy.

“You have me at a disadvantage. Have we met?”

And of course Uncle Charles wouldn’t recognize him. When he saw Tommy yesterday, he was seventeen. Now, Tommy would be lucky if he passed for a teen at all.

“It’s me!” Tommy pleaded. “Your grand-nephew, or whatever. Step-grandson?” It’s not like there’s a word for ‘you know, your boyfriend’s grandson-slash-ward’

Charles looked more closely at his face. His eyes sparked in recognition, but his face paled.

“Oh dear. We’d better get you home.”

-

“Charles you can’t just bring random children into my house. This isn’t your school.”

“Erik, he isn’t random, he’s-“

“I’m your _grandson_ , ya’ jerk!” the preteen yelped.

Erik stared down at the child. That hair… that nose…

“Pietro has some explaining to do,” he snarled.

Tommy groaned.

“No, the one you already have,” Charles corrected.

Erik’s bushy white eyebrows furrowed in thought.

“Aren’t you going to freak out?” Tommy wondered. “Demand how this is possible, maybe?”

“Well I assume this happened because you insist on sticking your nose in other people’s business, Thomas,” his grandfather told him.

“You know, some people would be proud to have a kid working with the NYPD,” Tommy complained.

“Hm,” Erik acknowledged. “Not in this family.”

-

“Wait, so the hair thing is genetic?” America asks Kate later. “I just thought Tommy bleached it all the time.”

Kate gives her an odd look. “Erik and Pietro have the same hair.”

America shrugs. “Yeah, but they’re old.”

Kate turns away and folds up a sweatshirt Tommy had left at her house a few weeks back. He wouldn’t be coming back for that any time soon…

“Mr. Maximoff has had white hair all his life, I think. I mean, there are a couple pictures at Mr. Lehnsherr’s house, and he looks pretty much like Tommy does. Like Max does.”

“We’re not really buying ‘Max Shepherd’ as that kid’s real name, right?”

Kate didn’t look up.

“America. This is going to sound weird, but I think Max is Tommy.”

She paused, waiting for her friend’s reaction.

“Oh good, it isn’t just me,” America replied. “Tommy is smart but he is not a great actor.”


	2. The Scarlet Witch

Billy was what you’d call “happily adopted.” He knew from childhood that his parents weren’t related to him by blood, but that never seemed to matter when they so clearly loved him.

His birth mom got pregnant young. At first, she visited him. She was his most common babysitter as a toddler. She would read books to him, show him magic tricks, and make sure he knew that he was never, ever unwanted.

But then, when Billy was in second grade, Wanda stopped visiting. His parents made excuses, but little Billy didn’t pay any mind. He knew that they would never tell him if she left on purpose, so what was the point of believing their story of M _issing, Presumed Dead_?

He had a small cardboard box of her belongings under his bed. Little things. Thing’s she’d left at the Kaplan house over the years. Things her roommate sent over after she disappeared. Mementos.

There was a stack of crayon drawings Billy gave her, a few pieces of jewelry, a poem written on a scrap of paper, a book of magic tricks.

Being an eight year old boy, Billy had ignored the poem and the jewelry, but was entranced by the idea of stage magic.

It was that book, as well as hints hidden in the old poem and a good bit of luck that led Billy Kaplan (age 16) to Wanda’s secret hiding spot one cold November night.

He shouldn’t even be here. He’d lied to an old woman to get into the apartment building in the first place; he’d used every trick in Wanda’s yellowing book to get past suspicious neighbors.

And here he was, in the last place anyone had seen his birth mother: her old apartment.

He’d never been here as a kid. All of Wanda’s visits happened on the Kaplan’s side of town, at the house, or at local parks. He didn’t know if the paint had changed, if the new tenants had replaced the countertops, if any of this furniture was left over from eight years prior.

Billy did know this: He needed to be quiet. He needed to be sneaky. He needed to get out of here before anyone saw him.

But first, he needed to see what his mother wanted him to find.

It was behind the loose crown molding at the base of the kitchen counter. The old wooden edging was covered in peeling paint, and Billy pulled it up easily to reveal a small hiding space under the cabinets. It was short, one two inches tall, and maybe two and a half feet wide.

Billy reached in- and stifled a scream as something small and furry ran over his hand.

He looked around. Had anyone heard that? How long did he have before someone found him and called the cops?

He reached his hand in again. This time, he hit something smooth and flat.

It was a laptop. An old, dusty laptop.

He pulled it out and reached in again.

Dirt, sawdust, and dead insects, but nothing else from Wanda.

Billy clutched the computer to his chest. This would have to be enough.

-

Billy opened the laptop as soon as he got home, of course. Who needs sleep, anyway?

The laptop, being eight years old at the least, refused to turn on.

Billy’s quest to understand his birth mother’s final message was thwarted until he could find some way to access the data from the computer.

He was kind of glad he didn’t have to use the old keyboard. Who knew what got into it in the intervening eight years? What kind of creepy-crawlies had laid eggs or- okay now he was freaking himself out.

-

The laptop laid untouched under Billy’s bed for several weeks.

He surfed the net, and learned about hard-drive enclosures. What sizes to buy, how to hook one up, how to take out an old harddrive without harming it.

Billy hesitated, at first. Finally, he typed in his shipping address and waited.

Then, one day-

-

Notes, schematics, security video.

Phone numbers and addresses.

Chemical compositions for smoke bombs, knock-out gas, flash grenades.

 Diagrams of Wanda’s facial structure, with hand-written notes for how to make her nose look larger with wax, smaller with strategic contouring, direction for how to make her face to look lighter or darker or thinner or fatter. Red pen signing “with Love, Raven” at the bottom of the page.

An encyclodedia’s worth of information about precious stones. How to tell real from fake. How to make convincing fakes. Factors that effected a gem’s color, weight, density, clarity, hardness. The words “terrigan crystals???” in bold and italics.

And several folders full of photos of him as a child.

Billy leaned back in his chair and tried to breathe.

Just who was Wanda?

-

It took him until January to find the video file she’d left.

The laptop was full of data on obscure and seemingly-random topics. So, in his boredom, Billy took to searching file titles for his own name.

And he found it.

His mother’s- Wanda’s- face, looking back at him from the screen. She looked so young. At least a decade younger than his adoptive mother, maybe only five or six years older than he was now.

Billy paused, and reconsidered that thought. Okay, he really hoped she was older than that. At least 24 or something.

And the Wanda on the screen spoke.

She loved him. She would miss him. Warnings, danger, secrets.

She was a criminal. A master thief.

The Scarlet Witch.

And if this video was recorded shortly before her disappearance, that meant her job wasn’t over.

Billy was just sixteen. He was still in highschool. He couldn’t drive and he couldn’t stand up for himself and he didn’t know what good he could do but,

He finally knew why Wanda left.

He had to try.

-

On February 14th, Valentine’s Day, the ‘phantom thief’ known as the Scarlet Witch made her first announcement in eight years.

“I will steal the Padparadschah Sapphire,” she said in a post left on an anonymous message board online.

It was widely viewed as a hoax, a joke.

Until, the following night, the sapphire disappeared.


End file.
